


up top is where the bluebirds go

by oxymoron_prone



Series: oxy's FFXV hell [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: 3+1, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Daggers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Mugging, Murder, Pre-Canon, Swords, emotional gladio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-08 15:47:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14108733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoron_prone/pseuds/oxymoron_prone
Summary: It is the job of those in service to the Crown to protect the royal family with their lives, by any means necessary.In other words, each of Noctis's three retainers can affirm that their first kills happened in defense of the prince.Noctis attempts to keep the score even enough.





	1. mind your shoes and mind your feet

**Author's Note:**

> here's a thing  
> three-part thing  
> gonna have 3 parts when im done  
> or maybe more  
> who knows  
> unbetad, unedited. we die like men. point out mistakes if you find them i guess  
> title and chap titles from WTNV episode 87  
> -oxy

Prompto didn’t live in the best part of town, and Noctis didn’t really care.

Prompto had been embarrassed the first time Noct had come over - his friend was the crowned prince, and Prompto didn’t want him to observe the peeling paint, cracked ceiling, exposed wiring of the place he spent a lot of his time.

Noct had taken a look around, shrugged off Prompto’s nerves in seven words, “Eh, I don’t really give a fuck.”

Noct came over to Prompto’s apartment all the time to hang out or nap or avoid Ignis’s prying questions about his day. They watched shit TV shows on Prompto’s crappy 32-inch with the dead pixels in the upper right-hand corner and ate popcorn.

Prompto went over to Noct’s apartment a lot, too, and the two of them ended up doing very similar things. Crap TV until the wee hours of the morning, spilling popcorn all over the undoubtedly expensive carpet, getting butter and salt on the knobs of Noct’s game controllers.

Today was no different from the usual - shit TV shows on Prompto’s couch, gaming on their phones, avoiding homework until around two in the morning. And then Prompto and Noctis decided together that they needed to walk to the corner store to buy some snacks.

Noct tucked his phone into his pants and snagged his wallet off Prompto’s rickety entryway table.

“Ready to go?” Prompto asked, shoving his own wallet into his back pocket.

“Let’s hit it,” Noctis replied, and the two made their way down the stairs and out onto the dark, quiet, 2:00 am street.

They were halfway down the street to the corner store when Noctis suddenly stopped walking, and when Prompto turned to ask what was up his words died on his lips.

“Noct, wha-?”

There was a man with a gun pressed to Noctis’s left temple. Noct’s hands were raised in the air as if in surrender. His expression was calm, but his eyes were wild.

The man was in a dark hoodie and dark jeans and ripped-up running shoes. Prompto couldn’t see his face at all.

“Wallets, _now_!” The man commanded.

Prompto saw him reach up and flick the gun’s safety off. He tensed.

“Alright, man,” Noctis said calmly, keeping his eyes forward, “It’s okay. You’re the one with the gun here, dude. We’re going to do whatever you want, and we’ll move as slow as you need us to, right, Prom?”

“...yeah,” Prompto agreed, staring straight at his friend. His hands itched and he fought the urge to call his pistols from the arsenal. There was no way he’d be able to get an accurate shot off before the mugger could, at the range he was holding that gun.

Owning a gun was illegal in Insomnia. _Using_ a gun was another thing entirely. Prompto had been given the right to do both of those things as soon as he had completed his training as part of the Crownsguard three months ago.

Cor had handed him his first live weapon in the firing range underneath the training grounds with several choice words.

_“Part of being in the Crownsguard means that you don’t have to follow all the rules that regular Insomnian citizens do._

_“If you think there’s a reasonable threat to the life of anyone in the royal family or in service to the royal family, you use deadly force first and ask questions later.”_

Prompto sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to the deadly force part - he couldn’t imagine taking a life, ever, no matter the circumstance. He’d pledged that he was prepared to do it in defense of the prince’s life, or the king’s life, but he wasn’t, really.

Cor hadn’t told him what to do in this situation.

“Hey, man, I don’t want you to have to do something you don’t want to do,” Noctis was saying, “and you holding that right against my head is making me a little twitchy. You can keep it pointed at me if you want, but mind stepping back just a bit?”

“K-keep your hands up,” the mugger ordered, but took three steps back from Noctis.

“You got it,” Noctis said, arms still up, “You want me to get my wallet for you? It’s in my back pocket, and I’d have to lower at least one arm for that.”

“No, your-your pretty blond friend can do that for me,” the mugger stuttered out, staring at Prompto and jerking his head in a silent gesture towards Noctis. “You, walk over here real slow and don’t try anything funny, or I’ll put a bullet through his brain.”

“Noct-” Prompto began.

“It’s okay, Prom, really. Just do what he says. No amount of money is worth a life,” Noctis assured, throwing Prompto a sincere glance. “Make slow movements and tell him what you’re doing before you do it.”

“Okay,” Prompto took a deep breath, “I’m gonna walk over,” he took very slow steps towards Noctis, “reach out my right hand,” Prompto patted Noct’s back pockets and found his leather wallet on the second attempt, “take out the wallet,” he continued, “and I’ll step away from him and put it on the ground,” Prompto concluded. Both of his hands were trembling wildly at his sides.

Noct threw him a grateful look.

The mugger scooped it up and was standing back upright in a flash, opening the billfold and pulling out all manners of currency and cards.

“Well, what do we have here, _Highness_?” The mugger sneered suddenly, the hand not holding the gun waggling around Noct’s ID card.

 _Oh no_. Prompto’s heart sank. He could only imagine the kind of grudge someone dressed in that manner would have against the royal family, what with their extreme wealth and power.

Noctis stayed silent, but his eyes closed for a moment and a heavy breath huffed out of his chest.

“I bet I could get a lot more outta you if I took you with me,” the mugger chuckled, “and sent a nice little video to dear old dad. What do you think?”

“Hey, man,” Prompto spoke up, and the mugger’s weapon was suddenly pointed at him. His hands went up just like Noct’s. “I can promise you, you let us go now and we won’t tell anybody about this. You can keep whatever we have. Taking Noctis is a _bad_ idea, trust me.”

The mugger seemed to consider this. “Know what? You’re right. I won’t be taking His Highness anywhere. But you won’t, either,” and with that he fired a shot at Noctis.

Noctis fell hard to his knees with his hands clasped over the bullet wound in his stomach. Prompto watched blood pour through his fingers and he watched the mugger level the gun at Noct’s head once more.

_use deadly force first, ask questions later._

In an explosion of blue crystalline light, Prompto’s pistols were in his hands and he was firing them. Two, four, six bullets embedded themselves in the mugger’s skull in a flurry of sound and motion. Pieces of bone and brain and splatters of blood landed on the sidewalk and the wall of the building next to them.

The mugger’s gun clattered to the ground, and the man fell soon after it.

Prompto was leaning over Noct with his shirt balled up and pressed to the gushing wound. Noct was groaning in pain and turning a startling shade of white. Prompto’s pistols dissolved into thin air, forgotten and unneeded.

“Ignis!” Prompto yelled into his phone, and - when exactly had he dialed the number? - “My street, now! Noct got shot!”

Then he was calling the emergency center a few blocks away and repeating his address three times, and then he was just applying pressure to Noct’s stomach and comforting his friend as blood seeped across the pavement.

Out of nowhere Ignis was there, and then the ambulance was there, and there were EMTs nudging Prompto back from the prince and assuring him he had a good chance at survival while loading him into the vehicle and speeding away.

Prompto stared at his hands, covered in Noctis’s blood. Ignis put his hand on Prompto’s shoulder and tried to guide him into the sleek black car he’d driven to the scene.

Prompto paused when he caught sight of the cooling corpse of the mugger on the ground, not yet removed from the cold concrete.

He’d just killed a guy. He’d just murdered someone in defense of the Crown. He wanted to feel ill. He wanted to feel the need to cry. He wanted to feel as if he’d done something wrong.

Instead, he pulled one of his pistols from the air, leveled it at the mugger’s stomach, and fired.


	2. it can and it could and it would and it will

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's part 2 of the thing  
> gladio's part of the thing  
> basically  
> we know he's a hardass like all the time in canon  
> and brotherhood he's resentful of noct  
> here's in between canon and brotherhood gladio who's never taken a life before and is only 16 when it happens  
> like jeez  
> -oxy

Gladio wanted to know why his dad came home at night every once in a while with a grim expression on his face and stiff dark stains on his uniform. His father hadn’t been forthcoming until Gladio turned six, when he thought Gladio was old enough to know.

“Killing is a part of my job, Gladio,” Clarus had said, leaning down to look his son in the eye. “It is not enjoyable, it is necessary. Protecting the Crown means protecting the Crown, by _any_ means. Keeping the King safe is my job.”

Clarus’s son was an Amicitia, and he explained as gently as he could that being the Shield to the King was a job that ran in the family.

Gladio would be Shield of the King one day, and he would have to kill, as well.

And until he was sixteen and Crown Prince Noctis was thirteen, he’d had no idea just what that meant.

Then, _this_ happens.

Gladio was on the training grounds, practicing his strikes against moving training dummies, when a page burst into the room panting, eyes frantic.

“Intruder in the gardens, sir!” The page gasped out, propping himself upright with an arm against the doorway.

Gladio’s grip on his sword tightened and he was off and running.

There was an intruder in the Citadel gardens, where there was never, ever supposed to be an intruder.

An intruder in the gardens, where Iris was supposed to be playing until three in the afternoon while Noctis finished up his school day.

The Shield of the Prince glanced at the massive clock in the entryway as he sprinted through the halls, and noted that it was three-thirty already. Which meant the prince would already have returned from school and likely would’ve found Iris already.

And that meant that _both_ of them were in danger.

Noctis and Gladio’s eight-year-old sister were in _danger_.

Gladio’s feet pounded on the stone and he made a left, a right, and a right and found himself skidding to a stop in the blinding afternoon sunlight, staring at a scene he never thought he’d have to. 

Two bloodied adult corpses lay on the ground - Noctis's minders, who had no combat experience whatsoever, had taken hits for their young charge and had paid the ultimate price.

Noctis, in all his newly-teenaged wisdom, had shoved Iris about ten feet behind him and decided to face down the danger all by himself. His eyes were wide and worried and teary, and he continually cast glances at the still bodies on the grass.

The man was about six feet tall, wearing a massive tiger mask, and brandishing two knives. The band around his arm marked him as a gang member.

The intruder towered over Noctis - tiny, unassuming Noctis, who frantically tried to call a weapon from his Armiger but still didn’t have a good grasp on the magic to do so - and flipped his knives threateningly so he held them in a reverse grip. The flash of the blades among the organic greens of the garden snapped Gladio out of his stupor.

“Hey!” Shouted Gladio before he knew what he was doing, “Back away from the kid!” He began to rush the man with the knives, holding his sword so he’d be able to strike right when he got into range.

“You gonna make me, boy?” Growled out the man from behind the mask, his attention finally off of Noctis.

Noctis took notice of this and turned away to run and presumably get Iris out of the gardens, but a knife was suddenly sinking through the top of his right foot, through the sole of his boot, and then through the ground. The hilt of it pressed against his instep.

Gladio heard Noctis’s pained yell right as his greatsword clashed with the man’s remaining blade with a metallic clang. He looked over to see Noctis crouched, curled as close as he could around his foot, trying to rip the blade out.

Iris looked slightly green in the background, small hands pressed to her mouth, but she made no move to get any closer to the conflict.

Gladio raised his leg in one swift motion and kneed the man in the chest, forcing a gruff grunt from behind the animal mask. He thrust his elbow into the man’s head, sending him spinning to the ground in a dazed heap.

The Shield planted one of his feet on the man’s chest to prevent him from getting back up, and permitted himself to look over at Noctis and Iris again.

“You okay, Iris, Noctis?” Gladio asked shortly.

Iris bobbed her head, short hair flying everywhere. She took this as the cue to move forward to help Noctis, who still couldn’t get the knife out of his foot.

“Nice try, _boy_ ,” gasped the man from the ground, and a glint of silver caught Gladio’s eye.

He had so little time to react he was stunned when he found the blade of his greatsword sinking through the man’s neck and through the grass and through the dirt. Then, Gladio was stumbling away from the intruder and away from his sword. Away from the blood staining the green, green grass.

A commotion startled Gladio and he ripped the sword out of the ground and out of the flesh to face the new danger, but it was just Cor. The greatsword made its way back to Gladio’s side, his muscles suddenly useless in keeping it aloft.

“Your Highness!” Cor yelled from the entryway and rushed forth to help Noctis and Iris pull the knife from Noctis’s foot.

Cor had brought with him the entirety of the Crownsguard, apparently, and they swarmed the garden to search for more intruders or more danger of any kind. Cor had just hefted the prince into his arms in order to get him to a doctor when someone new appeared at the entrance to the gardens.

“Your Majesty,” Cor acknowledged as Regis swept through the entryway sans cane, Clarus hot on his heels. There was a clear question on Regis’s frowning mouth, and worry in his eyes.

“Threat’s been neutralized, I’m taking the prince to see about his wound,” Cor explained.

“And the cleanup?” Regis asked, casting his glance to the corpse of the intruder cooling on the ground, and frowning at the bodies of the prince's handlers a short distance away.

“Underway,” Cor replied, and began the trek through the halls to the medical ward with Regis following closely behind him, one hand grasping Noctis’s hand. Cor kept talking, informing Regis of exactly why it took so long to deal with the security breach, "The Amicitia kid was closest, he got here first..."

Gladio felt small arms clasp at his legs and looked down to see Iris pressing her face against his thigh, shuddering. He set his sword down gently and picked his sister up.

His father slowly picked his way through all the swarming Crownsguard.

“Gladio, did you kill that man?” Clarus asked quietly as he came to stand next to his son.

Gladio looked over at the body again, which was being covered with a large white cloth someone had gotten from somewhere. Red seeped through the fabric and turned Gladio’s stomach. His head felt heavy. He’d never even seen the man’s face. He probably never would.

“Gladio,” Clarus pressed, gripping his son’s chin and forcing him to turn away.

“Yes,” said Gladio distantly, “he had another dagger. He was going to throw it and kill Noctis.”

Clarus paused, eyebrows scrunching together in sympathy.

“Son,” Clarus began, “You were just doing your job.”

Gladio’s _job_. He wasn’t even part of the Crownsguard yet. He had two more years until he even could be accepted. There was a man lying dead - a horrible man, an awful man, someone who had threatened not only the prince but Gladio’s kid sister - and Gladio was just doing his job.

He would get a commendation from the King for saving his son, most likely.

“My job,” Gladio mumbled numbly.

He blinked slowly in the bright afternoon sunlight shining off the grass, the flowers, the pool of blood that hadn’t stopped seeping across the ground, and he clutched Iris closer to himself.

She shook.

He shook, too.


	3. what hides under the cars that pass by

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> iggy's turn  
> iggy's turn  
> thank the lord it's iggy's turn  
> magic time friend  
> magic time :)  
> igs always had the air of like a kingsman agent to me  
> like: i'll be a gentleman while slicing your fingers off to get information out of you.  
> can u spy with ur little eye the extremely subtle nod to avatar the last airbender?  
> -oxy

Ignis stared across the street at the smouldering house - smoke climbing high into the sky and choking the moon - with thinly veiled horror stretched across his face.

“It’s okay, Ignis, really,” Noctis assured him, clapping a hand on his advisor’s shoulder, “Everything’s fine.”

Ignis tore his attention away from the embers and glanced at his friend, bruises across his pale face and split lip in danger of reopening, and forgot completely about the building he’d set ablaze.

Because what was one building when Ignis had nearly been too late?

***

It wasn’t common knowledge was that Noctis had a house before he had an apartment. It was a one-story, two-bedroom, two-bathroom thing a little closer to the Citadel than Noctis maybe would’ve liked, but at least his father had approved of it.

Ignis popped in every once in a while since Noctis moved out of the Citadel at 17 out of honest worry for the prince and his eating and sleeping habits. He cooked sometimes, he cleaned sometimes, and every once in a while Noctis didn’t feel like being alone and so Ignis slept over.

This was one such evening. Ignis sat at the kitchen table and worked on homework for the university classes he was taking while Noctis lounged on the sofa and watched some action movie.

At around midnight, Noctis stood from the couch and turned the TV off, stretching until his joints cracked and popped. He sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

“Alright, Iggy, I’m gonna head to bed,” Noctis mentioned.

“Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” Ignis muttered distractedly, flipping through several of the annotated pages that he’d been taking notes on for the past hour and half.

“You got it, Specs,” Noctis said over his shoulder and threw up a lazy wave.

Ignis heard the gentle click of the door to the master bedroom slipping closed and removed his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose briefly. He considered the mass of papers stacked up on the table before him that he had already read, and the even larger pile that he’d not gotten to, and then considered the time of the night.

Then he cleaned up his papers from the table and placed them carefully in his “In” and “Out” three-ringed binders, and sat ungracefully on the couch. There, he watched mindless TV in a desperate attempt to decompress, and allowed his tired eyes to slip closed.

Some - minutes, or hours perhaps - later, Ignis was startled awake by a loud noise. He glanced around the living room in suspicion and leapt from his seat when there was the sound of glass breaking from the master bedroom.

“Highness?” Ignis called experimentally, still half asleep, and was on the move after ten seconds of no response, “Noctis?” he called louder, moving down the hallway to Noctis’s door.

He grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it, but found that Noctis had locked it. Ignis huffed and resigned himself to dealing with the consequences later, and he froze the lock completely solid in a burst of hasty magic. Then he stepped back and kicked the door as hard as he could, the metal of the lock shattering and allowing him entrance.

The light from the hallway flooded the dark room, and Ignis found a shape dragging the prince to the opened, shattered window. Noctis’s head lolled with every motion. Ignis saw the light catch on liquid dripping from Noctis’s lower lip.

“Noct!” Ignis shouted, hands alight with fire he couldn’t remember summoning. He felt his mouth twist into a snarl, “Release the Prince, _now_ , and you may live to see another day.”

“Rather not,” the figure said, and Ignis noted that it was a male voice, “really rather just leave now. Boss said no witnesses, though,” he said nonchalantly, and allowed the prince to fall to the ground with a loud thud.

The man cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck, and Ignis raised a brow in bemusement. Overconfident, then. Easy.

The scuffle, Ignis believed, was pitifully short and almost uneventful. Evidently, the man planning to kidnap the prince was not prepared to encounter any significant resistance.

He launched himself at Ignis with a yell of nothing in particular, and Ignis neatly sidestepped the attack while spinning to face the man and throwing the fire he’d amassed in his general direction. Once the man was distracted by trying to put out his clothing, Ignis moved to disable.

 _'Boss,'_ Ignis's brain quietly reminded him, _he said 'boss.' He's not working alone._

Disable _and_ gather intelligence.

A swift kick to the man’s back had him sprawling on the floor, and Ignis reached down to grab his left arm. Then, Ignis pressed his leg down hard on the man’s back and pulled up harshly on his arm. The arm was pulled from the socket and the man _screamed_.

“Now, if you’d like to keep the _other_ one in place, you’ll tell me who your boss is and why he wants the Prince,” Ignis told the man shortly, releasing the arm.

“Fuck, man!” The would-be kidnapper panted shallowly, groaning in pain, “I can’t - he’ll _kill_ me!”

“I recommend you take the burden of your decision off your boss, who you know will kill you for your betrayal, and focus more on me,” Ignis ground his heel into the man’s spine, “as I am still _making up my mind_.”

Ignis reached down and pressed a searing hand to the man’s neck, holding it there until the flesh began to burn.

“ _FUCK_! I can’t, don’t you understand?!” The man exclaimed, writhing on the floor.

“You’ll tell me what I want to know, or this will be your _end_ ,” Ignis threatened, and with a snap of his fingers the man’s clothing was on fire again, and he couldn’t roll around to put it out.

“Shit!” There was the horrific smell of burning flesh and the primal deep screaming of something in the throes of death, “ _OKAY_ \- okay! His name is Virgil, he’s the leader of the Helios - he wanted a ransom!”

Then he couldn’t speak any longer, and was just screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And then the screaming stopped, and Ignis patted the leg of his pants to smother the patches of his slacks that had caught in the scuffle.

Ignis then turned his attention to Noctis, who was seemingly trying to fight his way out of unconsciousness. Ignis moved to the prince and grabbed his right arm.

The two were outside and across the street from the house quickly being consumed by uncontrollable elemental fire, Noctis sitting on the curb to stifle his dizziness, when the gravity hit Ignis in the stomach.

Torture. Manslaughter. Arson.

He almost wanted to laugh at the crimes he’d committed. Instead, he watched the destruction while on the phone calmly with the emergency dispatcher, asking her to send an ambulance and several fire trucks.

Other residents nearby had emerged from their homes at this point and were clustered around Ignis and his charge, asking the prince if he was alright, asking Ignis if he was alright, asking _what the hell happened?_

Noctis definitely had at least a concussion, Ignis decided as he took a closer look at the Prince’s dilated pupils. Ignis himself had a few minor burns on his leg, but nothing extreme.

“Igs,” Noctis insisted, shaking himself a little to clear his head, “Don’t worry about the house - Dad can replace and pay for everything. You won’t get in trouble for this, I swear,” Noctis promised.

Something told Ignis that Noct was talking about more than just the house.

“How much of my exchange did you catch?” Ignis asked.

“Enough of it,” Noctis declared. He stared hard up at his advisor with his uneven pupils. Noctis must have seen something in Ignis’s expression that left him unsettled because he said, “I’m sorry you had to do that.”

“I would do anything for the safety and continued protection of the Crown,” Ignis deflected, “it is my duty as a member of the Crownsguard-”

“C’mere,” Noctis ordered, and grabbed Ignis’s hand to pull him down to sit on the curb, too. “Not what I meant, Iggy. I appreciate what you did. I’m sorry _you_ had to do it.”

Ignis allowed Noctis to lean on him until the ambulance roared onto the scene, and the two were loaded into the back for the journey to the hospital.

Noctis was _definitely_ concussed, and Ignis saw his actions as a product of the confusion that accompanied it.

That confusion proved infinitely valuable, though, when the shock of murder bled through Ignis’s veins an hour after the two of them were released from the hospital and settled in the residential wing of the Citadel. Noctis sat close to Ignis and started talking about arcades, and the report that was due next month in his history class, and how Prompto was saving up for a new camera.

Ignis felt the panic drain out of him with each mundane thing Noctis prattled on about. 

“Hey, Igs,” Noctis interrupted himself, “I’m still here cuz of you.”

_Thank you._

Ignis contemplated his words carefully.

“The benefits outweighed the costs, Highness.”

_You’re welcome._


	4. the witching happens down below

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conclusory chapter of this little four-parter thing of mine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> noct's turn  
> not necessarily his first kill(s) but they are all kills in defense of the three boyz he holds most dear  
> i know i said this would be a three part thing  
> but here i am  
> and here you are  
> so hello  
> -oxy

 

Gladio found out what had happened after the fact from Iris, who sat by his hospital bed and regaled him with the epic tale of Noctis’s defense.

The Shield had been knocked unconscious by a lucky blow - there had been at least ten enemies, after all, and Gladio himself had taken out five or six by the time he was removed from the battle.

Then, Noctis had broken onto the scene, drawn by the commotion (horrific mechanical whirrs and whines mixed with very human exclamations of pain and frustration. There weren’t just MT’s at this fight). The prince had summoned a mixture of weapons that Iris hadn’t seen before - short and long swords, spears, and even a few guns making the list that she could remember.

He’d moved so fast that he was a blur, Iris recalled. There were simply flashes of blue and strange motion through a space Iris couldn’t see.

When all the moving around was done, Iris remembered seeing bodies littering the ground. Some were useless piles of scrap metal. Some were useless piles of flesh and bone. The way Iris told it, she'd been hard-pressed to keep her lunch when she realized that not all of them had been robots.

And then Noctis was calling Iris over to make sure she was okay while simultaneously dialing every number saved in his phone that could possibly be of help to Gladio.

“That’s one less that I owe you,” said the note attached to a small vase of aromatic flowers. It wasn’t signed.

When Gladio was released from the hospital a few hours later, he found Noctis playing some video game in his rooms at the Citadel.

“Hey, kid,” Gladio said, and ruffled Noctis’s hair as he passed by.

Noctis slapped the hand away from his head playfully and fixed Gladio with a stare he couldn’t decipher.

“Looks like you’re in good spirits,” said the prince, “Iris doing okay, too?”

“She’s good - not a scratch on her,” Gladio replied.

“That’s a relief,” Noctis said, and turned back to his video game.

Gladio didn’t quite know how to say thank you, so he didn’t. He was sure Noctis understood, anyway.

*~*~*~*~*

Prompto became hyper-aware of the fact that sneaking past the Wall with Noctis was a _bad_ idea. While gasping around the hands clasped about his throat, Prompto would stake his meager salary on that very fact.

“N-oct!” Prompto choked out, his feet kicking wildly but unable to strike the Niflheim soldier.

Prompto’s hands scrabbled and clawed uselessly at the enhanced arm of his assailant, and he absently wondered why he’d never written a will - and then he wondered to whom his camera would be sent after it was revealed that he’d died -

And then there was the odd, phantom not-sensation of an object passing through his abdomen and embedding itself in the heart of the soldier. The hand around Prompto’s neck relaxed and the blonde collapsed to the ground just in time to see Noctis emerge from whatever space he disappeared into in order to warp, following the massive dagger he’d thrown, in a shattering of bright azure from nowhere.

The prince was all manic, glowing blue eyes and powerful crystalline magic and he made short work of the soldier with _strike_ after _strike_ after _strike_ with the long knife -

\- _not_ an MT, Prompto noticed as the agent of Niflheim took in a few pitiful, gasping breaths before stilling on the ground sans the crackling red electricity that accompanied mechanical deaths -

\- and before long Noctis rounded on Prompto, bloodlust dying away from his expression and immediately being replaced with something softer and more present. The set of his mouth and the scrunch of his brows said concern. Prompto wished his camera was on.

“Prompto, you okay?” Noctis asked, reaching out a hand to help his friend up.

Prompto accepted the assistance with a shaking arm, “Peachy, Noct.” It sounded like Prompto had been swallowing gravel for a year.

When the blond swayed dangerously on his feet, Noctis clasped his upper arm and helped him back down to the dusty ground, this time sitting with him and whipping out his phone.

“I’m gonna call Specs to come get us,” Noctis declared, thumb tapping out Ignis’s number swiftly on the touchpad.

“Noct - you’ll get in _trouble_!” Prompto protested as loudly as he dared, and winced immediately at the pain.

Noctis fixed a pointed glance on Prompto’s rapidly bruising neck, “You think I care?”

*~*~*~*~*

Every talk Ignis had had with the Marshall was to prepare him to fulfill his duties as Chamberlain and Advisor. Countless meetings regarding war strategy, economics, political conversation, and the intricacies of subterfuge and espionage regularly took tumbles through Ignis’s memories -

And absolutely none of those things were of any help as he was shoved up against the side of Noctis’s apartment building with the cold steel of a gun pressed up against his jaw and a hand pressed over his mouth.

Someone must have followed him - must have watched his movements until he managed to get Ignis alone and unguarded. Was he after information? Profit? Revenge?

Revenge was statistically more likely, information and profit following after.

Ignis couldn’t conjure his weapons in enough time to keep himself out harm’s way - the close range at which his attacker held the gun made sure of that. He heard the heart-stopping click of the gun’s safety being switched off and he winced.

No questions or demands, and then a move like that? Definitely revenge. Revenge against the Crown for something Ignis likely didn’t do or have any hand in whatsoever.

“Hey, Specs! You forgot your-!” A familiar voice was shouting from mere feet away. “ _Iggy_!”

And then there was a bright burst of blue and the second most sickening sound Ignis had ever had the misfortune of experiencing. Noctis’s Engine Blade appeared out of nowhere and slid neatly through the neck of Ignis’s attacker before he had any inkling of what was going on. There was a disgusting thud and a head fell to the ground, the sharp clatter of a gun hitting the pavement soon thereafter.

Blood spattered across Ignis’s glasses and his face and his crisp white shirt, though he found it very hard to care.

The prince made his way into Ignis’s line of sight, looking exceedingly ruffled and worried.

“Guess we’re even, huh, Igs?” Noctis joked mildly. The prince eyed Ignis warily, like he was worried his friend would self-destruct if given the chance.

“Even,” Ignis agreed, absolutely hating the way his voice broke on the word.

A short while later, the two were sitting on squishy chairs in the Citadel, being debriefed by officials on what happened during the incident. 

Before he was willing to talk, Noctis insisted that Ignis be given coffee and a huge, fluffy blanket ("If you want him hysterical and in shock, sure, just keep doing what you're doing," Noctis snarked).

It was at nighttime when the two of them were sitting side-by-side on the couch in Noctis's rooms in the Citadel, watching a game show Ignis couldn't care less about, when something peculiar struck him and he peered out of the corner of his eye at his charge. 

Ignis remembered killing the man in the house - feeling the ground drop out from underneath him when the shock of it all hit him in the chest. He remembered his lungs getting tight and the realization shooting through his veins with all the force of a rampaging behemoth. He remembered sitting hunched in on himself in that very room and Noctis doing everything he could to take Ignis's mind off of it. 

So Ignis looked at Noctis across the narrow gap and observed the quiet serenity and easy calm that Noctis exuded with every breath he took, and he wondered just when the prince had become so well-versed in killing.

Maybe one day Noctis would tell him.


End file.
